Rick Springfield on the Steve Harvey TV Show, “There’s a lot of dark stuff on this record” – The Snake King

During an appearance on Steve Harvey’s latest show, Rick Springfield talked about his latest album, The Snake King, which was released on January 26, 2018. A few excerpts from the interview have been transcribed below.

On touring:
I love to play. I figure I get paid to travel and when I get there I do the show and the show is fun. I love playing. I always loved playing. I started when I was thirteen. I just fell in love with the guitar, before girls.

On how he landed a role on General Hospital:
I actually got into acting because I was between record deals. I came over here from Australia as a musician in 1972. I was between record deals all the time, so I thought ‘well, to make some money, I’ll become an actor,’ which is pretty stupid and pretty naive because all the actors were waiting tables, until they could get an acting gig. But I lucked out and actually could pay the light bill for a couple of months running, it was great.

On working with Meryl Streep in the film Ricki and the Flash:
She’s incredible. She’s an incredibly gifted actor. I learned a lot from her. I learned to be a lot more brave on stage because she doesn’t have anything to prove, but she still does every scene differently and experiments. It was just a real gift to work with her.

On why his latest album is titled The Snake King:
It’s a character I wrote, created to talk about these things that I wanted to talk about and I put it in a blues idiom. It’s blues-based because all my first bands, growing up in Australia, were all blues bands. We were all B.B. King fans. There’s a lot of dark stuff on this record because there’s a lot of dark stuff happening in the world, and I’m very concerned about the planet. I’m very concerned about everybody else, the people, and especially the animals, because I love animals. The album is a call to arms to a degree. I see evil everywhere and I just wonder where God is in that scenario.